At 6:30am, John from Sea Mist dropped by and picked me up to go ashore. We trecked the 1/2 mile across the island to the village on the windward side to find the chap who bought lobsters from the overnight fishermen and sold them on. With all our luck finding them ourselves, this represented our best chance. It turned out the seas had been too rough the night before so noone had brought any in. So it turns out we can’t even buy them.

On the way back to the wharf we found Peter who had agreed to find us some fruit. After nearly a couple of hours of trekking through the plantations outside of the village we had a few bags full of lemons, mangoes and papaya. At the wharf we negotiated a price for it all and headed back.

During the morning I did a few minor projects. I tend not to mention this in the blog these days as I think it’s a little boring to write about and mainly I tend to forget about it when I get round to writing the blog.

Shortly before 12:30am John picked all three of us up to go ashore for the dinner we had been offered by Miimi in the village. Another trek across the island and we met up with Chris and John from Sara 2 and Lorraine and Chris from Gryphon 2. Cheryl and Ian from Sea Mist had stayed behind as neither were into sea food and we had been promised fish and lobster. On entering Miimi’s house we saw that our luck was in. There were indeed lobsters on the table. As seems to be the custom, the eight of us guests sat down to a prepared dinner while Miimi, her husband and other relatives were around. Two of them spent the entire dinner wafting fans to keep the flies away from us. The dinner was tasty and filling. At the end, after some conversation, we offered the gifts we’d all brought from our boats to Miimi who seemed quite pleased.

The afternoon, such that was left, was spent back on the boat generally relaxing.

Today we’ll definitely be moving on. Not without one more trip ashore to see if we can pick up lobsters today. You never know.

For our sail to Ha’afeva I again gave Helen and Ben a challenge. This was to determine the best route and plot this into the chart plotter. There was a choice of going around the north or south of the island and based on wind direction, etc. it was really up to them. They decided to go head sail only. With 20 knots of wind this was a reasonable thing to do. I performed my usual (for now) role at the helm to get us off the anchor but handed over to them to set the head sail, get us out from the reef and sail us over to Ha’afeva.

On arrival we saw Sea Mist and Leu Cat here with Kamaya just raising their anchor. Behind us Sara 2 was arriving. The Sea Mists having been here 24 hours were just going ashore at the same time as we were so we ended up hiking the road across the island to the village together. In the village we found a chap who sells lobsters and agreed to pick up two each the following morning.

Later on during our walk around the village we were greeted by Miimi who invited us over to lunch the following day. We’d heard about this before and were half hoping this would happen. The custom is they invite us to lunch and we bring gifts from the boat. She promised us sea food, including more lobster.

On the way back we bumped into another local called Peter who I think wanted to invite us to lunch but on discovering we’d been invited by Miimi he offered us (probably to sell) some mangoes. We were interested but suggested we’d bring some bags the following day when we collected the lobsters.

Back in the dinghy we dropped by Leu Cat to say hello as we hadn’t spoken to them since Tahiti although we had seen them in Nieafu. As we eventually arrived back at Dignity we were offered a generous chunk of Wahoo from Griffon 2 who’d also just arrived. They’d caught a 36lb fish and had too much for themselves. That was turned into a delicious curry for the evening.

Right now I’m downloading the day’s weather forecasts while I wait to go ashore with John from Sea Mist to get our lobsters and mangoes.

Ben woke with stomach pains which put a dampener on his day eventually ruling him out of the things we had planned. In the morning Helen, myself and John from Sea Mist went ashore to stretch our legs. Having asked a local who informed us we could walk north or south and that either was much the same we chose to go north. It almost felt middle aged with the town surrounded by a fence with gates on the roads through which we had to pass to leave. We walked north along a straight track with lush vegetation on either side, often semi cultivated with plenty of fruit trees. We reached the next village to the north which again was surrounded by a fence and gates. We guess this was to keep the pigs in which roamed freely within each village.

Passing through this next village and past a pack of somewhat brave (until we got near them) dogs we found a small trail down to the beach/coast. We walked the beach for a while before finding another, longer and run down path which took us back to the trail joining it just before the gate to the second village. We walked back to the first village collecting a few mangoes on the way which were reached by Helen sitting on my shoulders. Back in the first village I picked up a few extra mobile phone minutes. It always feels strange in a village in the middle of nowhere being able to top up the phone although I do understand it’s easier and cheaper to install mobile phones these days than a land network.

We were back on the boat in time for lunch and a short rest before the afternoon events. We’d planned on getting the hookah out and we’d extended and invitation to Sea Mist to join us. Ian and John responded and with Ben out of action and Helen feeling ambivalent due to the mediocre weather it ended up with the three of us out for just over an hour. Underwater we felt none of the rain that fell. We saw plenty of fascinating corals, not too plentiful fish and explored some caves/channels. I took my small spear gun in case we found lobsters in any of the numerous nooks and crannies but none were peeping out.

Helen cooked up a curry for dinner and as we were settling down John dinghied over from Sea Mist as the one other boat nearby, Sara 2, was having difficulties raising their anchor. The winds were predicted to rotate round overnight and they had been trying to move to get further from the reef. In doing so they’d discovered their anchor was tangled in the coral and had jammed their windlass. John had got involved and figured we needed numbers and muscle to get them shifted before the light fell. John went to fetch his son, Ian, to go underwater and free the anchor while John and I went aboard Sarah 2 to assist. We soon figured out the windlass wasn’t broken and got that going again. With Ian in the water direction our motions and occasionally diving down to free up the chain/anchor we were soon off. I took my leave and zipped off back to Dignity to finish my cooling curry. We capped off the evening by polishing off 4 more episodes of Prison Break. We’re over half way through now.

Today we’re out of here. One could easily chill for days here but there’s lot to see and time is running out. The weather windows form a pattern that seems to repeat every 10 days or so. There’s a weather window opening up right now and some vessels are already legging it south to catch it. Their should be another at the beginning of November. I suspect we’ll catch the one after that.

We learned from Sympatica, over the radio a couple of days ago, that there is an excellent sea mount 3nm away from us. We may well visit that later this morning before heading back to a new anchorage.